Hirst One Year Later

It’s been one year since a Whatcom County court ruled on what eventually came to be known as the Hirst Decision. That ruling has impacted rural Washington counties across the state, by making land owners responsible for studies to determine what impact construction projects could have on nearby water resources, rather than the Department of Economy issuing the findings.

Todd Meyers, with the Washington Policy Center said counties have done one of two things with their building permits because of the Decision, either shutting down the permitting process, or spending thousands of dollars to meet the new mandates.  Several fixes were floated by state lawmakers during the 2017 session, in hopes to come up with a fix.  Meyers told the Washington Ag Network Republicans wanted to return to the way the state had operated for years, with the DOE studying water impacts.

“And ironically the Governor [Jay Inslee] and House Democrats who have controlled the Department of Ecology since 1984 say that’s not acceptable, so RE[publicans said ‘OK, if you won’t negotiate on this, if individuals can’t build the state can’t build’.”

Because of that lack of a Hirst Fix, the GOP has refused to pass the state’s Capital Budget, putting a host of construction projects across Washington on hold.  Meyers said Hirst is not simply a Republican versus Democrat issue, but more an urban versus rural issue.

“There was a Hirst agreement, it was sort of an agreement from both sides, if that was put on the House floor, then it would probably pass because there are a number of rural Democrats would recognize that this is a problem.  So if this was actually put up to a vote I think we would have already had a solution on Hirst.”

Meyers does not anticipate there will be a push for bipartisan work to solve Hirst in the 2018 session.